There was a discussion on gurgle last week in which several members wrote their email addresses in the chat forum. Whilst there is nothing against this in our rules, I wanted to write a post advising on some best practices for staying safe while using online communities like the one here on gurgle.
One of the things that makes gurgle a great community is the openness of our members. Whether it's giving advice, uploading photos or telling parenting stories, the amount of information our members have been willing to share with us over the last two years has really helped to make gurgle what it is today.
Nevertheless, it still pays to be careful with your personal information - even on a site as friendly as gurgle. Giving out your full name, home address or phone number in the public areas of the site - chat, groups, blogs - is not recommended, neither is providing the name of your workplace or place of study. Remember that these areas of gurgle are completely open for anyone in the world to read.
Writing your email address on a public forum could invite spam emails from people trying to rip you off or trying to infect your computer with a virus.
Sharing contact details publicly could also attract attention from people trying to contact you for more sinister reasons.
If you want to exchange email addresses or other contact details with another gurgle member we would advise that you do so by using the private messaging service on gurgle - and only share your contact details with people you have built a relationship with and who you trust.
Another topic that sometimes comes up is meeting in real life. Again, while we are happy that you've made such strong relationships with each other here on gurgle, we would advise you to follow these steps when meeting someone you know from the internet in public:
- Get a friend to accompany you to the meeting.
- Always meet in a public place, preferably of your choice.
- Always tell someone you trust about where, when and who you are seeing.
- Have someone call you during the meeting to make sure everything is OK.
- Ring that person again when you get home to let them know you are safe.
If you do get unwanted attention from your presence here on gurgle, do not respond or react to any unsolicited messages, also don't click on any links or open any files from email addresses that you don't recognise. Report any problems using the exclamation mark on the site or by email -
community@gurgle.com.
Finally... Be careful, stay safe - but most importantly enjoy using gurgle!